Fresh off a tumultuous week in the National Assembly and in the middle of a crucial by-election campaign in Bonaventure that her Parti Québécois would eventually lose, she had stepped onto the set of popular French talk show Tout le monde en parle to record an episode that would air that Sunday night.

It had been just days since Marois lost two more MNAs – one of whom allegedly whispered to the Journal de Québec that a mass exodus from the PQ ranks, worse than the one his leader suffered in the spring, was imminent if she didn’t resign.

It had been a month since a poll was published showing that if Marois did step aside (for, say, Gilles Duceppe), her party would fare infinitely better in an election.

And it had been three weeks since a member of her caucus, Claude Pinard, had uttered these words to a crowd of stunned reporters in Quebec City:

“One of her serious handicaps for a big part of the public is the fact she’s a woman. … I sincerely believe that because she is a woman, people won’t support her.”

The remark was decried by politicians and pundits alike as ridiculous and outright sexist. Still, it had lingered in the air like a bad smell, and as Marois sat across from Tout le monde en parle host Guy A. Lepage, she likely knew she would have to address it.

“I have always thought that being a women was not a handicap when it comes to becoming premier,” she said, when Lepage eventually asked her about Pinard’s statement. “But I’m at the point where I don’t know any more after hearing this kind of comment.”

That answer seemed strangely out of place in a province that boasts one of the highest percentages of female members of any legislature in Canada (just shy of 30 per cent) and a provincial cabinet that is nearly equal parts male and female.

Quebec’s ministers of Labour, International Relations and Tourism are female. So is our deputy premier. Over the years, women in public office in Quebec have fought hard for everything from daycare subsidies to pay equity. And they have won.

Still, only a handful have attained Marois’s position as the leader of a major provincial party, or even set out to attain it. Among parties that have held seats in the National Assembly, the only other woman ever to vie for the top spot was Francine Lalonde, who ran in the 1985 PQ leadership race. Both Sylvie Roy and Louise Harel were made interim heads, but neither tried to become their party’s next permanent leader.

So why aren’t more women snatching at the reins?

“There is no perfect link between being a province that considers itself progressive, in terms of women – a province where there is a strong women’s movement – and being the first to take that step toward (electing) a female premier,” says Julie Miville-Dechêne, president of Quebec’s Conseil du statut de la femme (CSF). “Political parties, by their nature, favour men, but I couldn’t pass judgment on (the leadership question) based on any research. We just don’t have studies on this.”

What the CSF does have plenty of data on are the myriad challenges that still exist for all women in politics, regardless of their leadership ambitions – challenges which Miville-Dechêne speculates may be compounded as a woman rises through the party ranks.

These range from the difficulties of raising children while holding elected office to the old-boys’ club mentality that still pervades the political arena.

Manon Tremblay, a professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively about women in Canadian politics, says the very nature of political parties is also a major stumbling block.

“Political parties are a club. You have to be a member, you have to be engaged and make friends within the party,” she says. “That all takes time and a lot of flexibility … and when you look at work structures for men and women, we often see that women are in careers that have less flexibility to develop a political life.”

The experts are adamant, however, that there’s one explanation for the relative scarcity of female leaders in the Assembly that doesn’t hold water: that, as Pinard suggested, Quebecers themselves won’t accept a woman in the driver’s seat. Numerous studies have shown that the electorate does not discriminate against women in general, Tremblay notes, although there may be a “small minority” who refuse to vote for a candidate based solely on his or her sex.

Former Quebec finance minister Monique Jérôme-Forget, who resigned in 2009 after years of battling for pay equity and better representation for women, maintains she never ran up against blatant sexism during her 11 years in provincial politics.

“I never felt that people didn’t respect me,” Jérôme-Forget says without hesitation. “I don’t think a woman (running for premier) would ever be rejected simply because she’s a woman in Quebec.”

Chantal Maillé, an associate professor of women’s studies at Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute, argues that the very idea of “readiness” – a single point where nations or societies are ready for women leaders – simply doesn’t exist.

“Let’s go back to Israel with Golda Meir, or Ireland, which is a very conservative society in terms of gender roles, which had Mary Robinson,” Maillé says. “There’s no such thing as the right moment for electing a woman leader. It just happens when the conditions are there.”

That perfect storm is currently brewing in provinces and territories across Canada. 2011 has been a banner year for women in the upper echelons of provincial politics, and the next time the First Ministers meet, there will be four of them around the table.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s Kathy Dunderdale led the province’s Progressive Conservatives to a landslide victory in October. British Columbia’s Christy Clark and Alberta’s Alison Redford also became their respective provinces’ first female premiers this year after taking over from a retired leader, but neither has faced the electorate. Eva Aariak has been premier of Nunavut since 2008.

“Certainly it was surprising for Quebecers to realize that other provinces had beaten them to naming a woman,” Miville-Dechêne says. “But there are evidentially questions of differences in circumstances. This isn’t perfectly scientific.”

If Marois hasn’t become premier, for example, political observers have largely chalked it up to personality issues, coupled with the PQ’s long-standing tradition of ripping its leaders to shreds. Sexism may play a role, but it’s hard to gauge how large a role that might be.

For the moment, says Jérôme-Forget, all parties need to entice more high-calibre women to enter politics, and then work to keep them there. The departure in September of former deputy premier Nathalie Normandeau – who cited “an enormous need to do other things” – was a reminder that the second element is as critical as the first.

Political scientists and feminists in Quebec have suggested that providing parties with a financial incentive to run more female candidates would be a step in the right direction. But the biggest shift, Miville-Dechêne says, needs to be one of attitude – so that parties look to a female candidate not as a last resort, but as a viable first option.

“It’s a question of changing mentalities,” she says. “It’s about education, repeating the message to children in schools and within families that women and men are capable of the same things. But as you know, stereotypes don’t change easily.”

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